Last night, The Daily Show showed us that they continue to be informative, relevant, brutal, and absolutely hilarious. Watch Jon Stewart take CNBC to task:
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Michael Steele's Revisionist History
I am sure that many of you have heard about the fighting that has been going on between the RNC Chair Michael Steele and the conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh. In case you are late to this story here is an intentionally brief summary:
- Rush Limbaugh made the comment that he hopes President Obama will fail.
- Limbaugh is criticized for saying this but stands by his comments saying that if Obama succeeding means going against the principles that he believes, then of course he hopes Obama fails and he would think that many Republicans want Obama to fail as well.
- RNC Chairman Michael Steele goes on CNN, says that he is the head of the Republican Party and that Limbaugh is an entertainer. He also says that Limbaugh can be "incendiary" and "ugly". Here is the video of this exchange:
After this exchange, Limbaugh retaliated saying that Steele is not the head of the Republican Party. Steele then apologized to Limbaugh by saying:
Now, there is some revisionist history taking place as Michael Steele is claiming that he never attacked Limbaugh in the first place. He claims that he said that there were other "people out there" who may think that Limbaugh is incendiary and ugly, but that he never meant that to be his viewpoint. Watch:
In case you want to hear the exact language from Steele's CNN appearance that directly contradicts his most recent claims that he "never attacked" Limbaugh, just go watch it again for yourself. I also enjoy how Steele and others within the Republican Party are now saying that it is the Democrats and the left who are distracting America by bringing attention to all of this. Steele mentions in his final clip that the left are implementing some kind of plan that they have wanted to enact for a while...to distract Americans from the real issues by bringing up this controversy. Sure, that's it.
It's not only Steele either. Check out this exchange between MSNBC's David Schuster and former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher. Fleisher comes out on the offensive with his talking point about Obama acting "childish" and Schuster tries to show Fleisher just how hypocritical this claim is. It takes effort to not go insane when these items get flipped on the head on such a consistent basis and as part of a strategy to falsely revise history:
- Rush Limbaugh made the comment that he hopes President Obama will fail.
- Limbaugh is criticized for saying this but stands by his comments saying that if Obama succeeding means going against the principles that he believes, then of course he hopes Obama fails and he would think that many Republicans want Obama to fail as well.
- RNC Chairman Michael Steele goes on CNN, says that he is the head of the Republican Party and that Limbaugh is an entertainer. He also says that Limbaugh can be "incendiary" and "ugly". Here is the video of this exchange:
After this exchange, Limbaugh retaliated saying that Steele is not the head of the Republican Party. Steele then apologized to Limbaugh by saying:
“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh...I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. …There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”
Now, there is some revisionist history taking place as Michael Steele is claiming that he never attacked Limbaugh in the first place. He claims that he said that there were other "people out there" who may think that Limbaugh is incendiary and ugly, but that he never meant that to be his viewpoint. Watch:
In case you want to hear the exact language from Steele's CNN appearance that directly contradicts his most recent claims that he "never attacked" Limbaugh, just go watch it again for yourself. I also enjoy how Steele and others within the Republican Party are now saying that it is the Democrats and the left who are distracting America by bringing attention to all of this. Steele mentions in his final clip that the left are implementing some kind of plan that they have wanted to enact for a while...to distract Americans from the real issues by bringing up this controversy. Sure, that's it.
It's not only Steele either. Check out this exchange between MSNBC's David Schuster and former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher. Fleisher comes out on the offensive with his talking point about Obama acting "childish" and Schuster tries to show Fleisher just how hypocritical this claim is. It takes effort to not go insane when these items get flipped on the head on such a consistent basis and as part of a strategy to falsely revise history:
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Yoo Defends His Actions in Interview
John Yoo recently gave an interview to the Orange County Register discussing, in general terms, some of the decisions he made during his tenure with the Bush Administration and providing some thinly layered defenses of some of the legal memos that he crafted. It must be noted that he did not discuss and was not asked about the newly released memos that I have written about in my previous entries and this is presumably because this interview was conducted before these memos were made public.
Yoo does talk about how he came to be a "distinguished visiting professor" at Chapman University School of Law, how he has been received at Berkeley, and the crafting of various memos that gave President Bush vastly expanded executive power. Some samples from the interview:
John Balkin observes:
This is precisely what Yoo and others argued after 9/11, that the President could act as he pleased and could not be bound by laws, treaties, and even the Constitution. Yoo wouldn't have made his legal decisions differently, but would have added more "polish" to better explain that decision. In John Yoo's world, just because he wrote opinions which supposedly gave the Bush Administration these expanded powers, didn't mean that they had to use it. What on Earth would detract them from using these powers (that they were obviously interested in pursuing) if they had the advice that they could do so without being bound by documents like the Constitution? How ridiculous.
More memos and opinions need to be released and see the light of day so that investigations and prosecutions can take place. This type of assault on the rule of law and on the very foundation of this country cannot just be chalked up to "moving forward".
Yoo does talk about how he came to be a "distinguished visiting professor" at Chapman University School of Law, how he has been received at Berkeley, and the crafting of various memos that gave President Bush vastly expanded executive power. Some samples from the interview:
The thing I am really struck with is that when you are in the government, you have very little time to make very important decisions. You don't have the luxury to research every single thing and that's accelerated in war time. You really have decisions to make, which you could spend years on. Sometimes what we forget as private citizens, or scholars, or students or journalists for sure (he laughs), is that in hindsight, it's easier to say, "Here's what I would have done." But when you're in the government, at the time you make the decision, you don't have that kind of luxury.
Q. Is there anything you would have done differently?
A. These memos I wrote were not for public consumption. They lack a certain polish, I think – would have been better to explain government policy rather than try to give unvarnished, straight-talk legal advice. I certainly would have done that differently, but I don't think I would have made the basic decisions
differently.
Q. Is it normal practice to give just the straight opinion?
A. I think the job of a lawyer is to give a straight answer to a client. One thing I sometimes worry about is that lawyers in the future in the government are going to start worrying about, "What are people going to think of me?" Your client the president, or your client the justice on the Supreme Court, or your client this senator, needs to know what's legal and not legal. And sometimes, what's legal and not legal is not the same thing as what you can do or what you should do.
Q. The Department of Justice is looking into the legality of some of the memos you wrote. Is this a possible cost?
A. I wish they weren't doing it, but I understand why they are. It is something one would expect. You have to make these kinds of decisions in an unprecedented kind of war with legal questions we've never had to think about before. We didn't seek out those questions. 9/11 kind of thrust them on us. No matter what you do, there's going to be a lot of people who are upset with your decision. If Bush had done
nothing, there would be a lot of people upset with his decision, too. I understood that while we were doing it, there were going to be people who were critical. I can't go farther into it, because it's still going on right now. I'm not trying to escape responsibility for my decisions. I have to wait and see what they say.
John Balkin observes:
These two disowned claims lie at the heart of the Cheney/Addington/Yoo theory of presidential power-- namely, that when the president acts as commander in chief Congress may not restrict in any way his military decision making, including decisions about detention, interrogation, and surveillance. The President, because he is President, may do whatever he thinks is necessary, even in the domestic context, if he acts for military and national security reasons in his capacity as Commander in Chief. This theory of presidential power argues, in essence, that when the President acts in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, he may make his own rules and cannot be bound by Congressional laws to the contrary. This is a theory of presidential dictatorship.These views are outrageous and inconsistent with basic principles of the Constitution as well as with two centuries of legal precedents. Yet they were the basic assumptions of key players in the Bush Administration in the days following 9/11.
This is precisely what Yoo and others argued after 9/11, that the President could act as he pleased and could not be bound by laws, treaties, and even the Constitution. Yoo wouldn't have made his legal decisions differently, but would have added more "polish" to better explain that decision. In John Yoo's world, just because he wrote opinions which supposedly gave the Bush Administration these expanded powers, didn't mean that they had to use it. What on Earth would detract them from using these powers (that they were obviously interested in pursuing) if they had the advice that they could do so without being bound by documents like the Constitution? How ridiculous.
More memos and opinions need to be released and see the light of day so that investigations and prosecutions can take place. This type of assault on the rule of law and on the very foundation of this country cannot just be chalked up to "moving forward".
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Bush's Assault on the Constitution
It has become clear that in the last eight years, America was run by a group of extremists who did not respect the rule of law or the Constitution of the United States. The recent release of these nine legal opinions by the Department of Justice has only solidified this point.
President Bush and members of his Administration believed that they had the power to suspend Amendments to the Constitution, to detain prisoners without charge, to deploy the military on U.S. soil, to whisk people off to other countries so that they could be tortured, to listen in on the phone conversations of Americans without a warrant, and to find legal opinions that would justify this type of behavior. Those who have been critical of these actions along the way were either painted as "soft" or told they were on some kind of liberal witch-hunt. It cannot be much clearer that this type of assault on the liberties of Americans warrants further investigations and will have long term consequences.
Glenn Greenwald provides some excellent analysis of what this means:
Perhaps this is the same country that has a political class that continues to push the importance of "looking forward instead of backward" instead of critically examining these flagrant assaults on our laws and liberties. This is the continued viewpoint of the current Administration, despite indications that these memos are just the "tip of the iceberg".
Meanwhile, we have a group of people on the right that are screaming about President Obama and his supposed failure to adhere to the Constitution and how his policies are going to be the end of America. Could it be any clearer just how backward the discourse has become?
Scott Horton:
President Bush and members of his Administration believed that they had the power to suspend Amendments to the Constitution, to detain prisoners without charge, to deploy the military on U.S. soil, to whisk people off to other countries so that they could be tortured, to listen in on the phone conversations of Americans without a warrant, and to find legal opinions that would justify this type of behavior. Those who have been critical of these actions along the way were either painted as "soft" or told they were on some kind of liberal witch-hunt. It cannot be much clearer that this type of assault on the liberties of Americans warrants further investigations and will have long term consequences.
Glenn Greenwald provides some excellent analysis of what this means:
This is factually true, with no hyperbole: Over the last eight years, we had a system in place where we pretended that our "laws" were the things enacted out in the open by our Congress and that were set forth by the Constitution. The reality, though, was that our Government secretly vested itself with the power to ignore those public laws, to declare them invalid, and instead, create a whole regimen of secret laws that vested tyrannical, monarchical power in the President. Nobody knew what those secret laws were because even Congress, despite a few lame and meek requests, was denied access to them. What kind of country lives under secret laws?
Perhaps this is the same country that has a political class that continues to push the importance of "looking forward instead of backward" instead of critically examining these flagrant assaults on our laws and liberties. This is the continued viewpoint of the current Administration, despite indications that these memos are just the "tip of the iceberg".
Meanwhile, we have a group of people on the right that are screaming about President Obama and his supposed failure to adhere to the Constitution and how his policies are going to be the end of America. Could it be any clearer just how backward the discourse has become?
Scott Horton:
We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.
DOJ Releases More Controversial Opinions Penned by John Yoo
The Department of Justice has released nine legal opinions that were previously kept secret under the Bush Administration. A few of these memos were written by John Yoo, now infamous for writing the "torture memos", and are a very interesting look into the type of expanded power that the Bush Administration was interested in pursuing.
In a memo dated October 23, 2001, Yoo (along with Alberto Gonzales and William Haynes) argue:
Yoo also made comments on the President's power to suspend elements of the First Amendment during times of war:
These revelations are further documentation of the Bush Administration's attempt to find legal justification for vastly expanding the role of the President, even if it meant suspending or taking action that did not align with the Constitution. Scott Horton writes:
We do not simply need a "Truth Commission" but it is becoming clearer by the day that we need criminal investigations to get to the bottom of this and hold Bush Administration officials accountable. More on this to come.
In a memo dated October 23, 2001, Yoo (along with Alberto Gonzales and William Haynes) argue:
"We do not think a military commander carrying out a raid on a terrorist cell would be required to demonstrate probable cause or to obtain a warrant...we think that the better view is that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military operations designed to deter and prevent future terrorist attacks."
Yoo also made comments on the President's power to suspend elements of the First Amendment during times of war:
"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully...the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."
These revelations are further documentation of the Bush Administration's attempt to find legal justification for vastly expanding the role of the President, even if it meant suspending or taking action that did not align with the Constitution. Scott Horton writes:
John Yoo’s Constitution is unlike any other I have ever seen. It seems to consist of one clause: appointing the President as commander-in-chief. The rest of the Constitution was apparently printed in disappearing ink.
We need to know how the memo was used. Bradbury suggests it was not much relied upon; I don’t believe that for a second. Moreover Bradbury’s decision to wait to the very end before repealing it suggests that someone in the Bush hierarchy was keen on having it.
It’s pretty clear that it served several purposes. Clearly it was designed to authorize sweeping warrantless surveillance by military agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Using special new surveillance programs that required the collaboration of telecommunications and Internet service providers, these agencies were sweeping through the emails, IMs, faxes, and phone calls of tens of millions of Americans. Clearly such unlawful surveillance occurred. But the language of the memos suggest that much more was afoot, including the deployment of military units and military police powers on American soil. These memos suggest that John Yoo found a way to treat the Posse Comitatus Act as suspended.
We do not simply need a "Truth Commission" but it is becoming clearer by the day that we need criminal investigations to get to the bottom of this and hold Bush Administration officials accountable. More on this to come.
Monday, March 2, 2009
The CIA Destroyed 92 Tapes of Interrogations
It just came down not too long ago that the CIA has admitted to destroying 92 tapes of interrogations that contain torture. From the AP story:
Harper's Scott Horton writes:
The tension continues to build surround the central issue of the Bush Administration's interrogation program. Something has to give eventually.
New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations, far more than has previously been acknowledged. The revelation Monday comes as a criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter. The acknowledgment of dozens of destroyed tapes came in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of terror interrogation programs. "The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed," said the letter by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. "Ninety two videotapes were destroyed." The tapes became a contentious issue in the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made. The letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit,
including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe
the destroyed contents, and the identities of those who may have viewed or
possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.
Harper's Scott Horton writes:
This news makes the case for an independent commission of inquiry still more compelling. It also builds the case for a special prosecutor to look into matters surrounding torture. The new prosecutor must be a person of stature and gravity on a par with the attorney general himself, must be seen as above the political fray, and must be given the resources and manpower to fully investigate the affair–including the increasingly obvious role played by the Justice Department. There is one inescapable conclusion to draw from the destruction of evidence here: those who destroyed it fully appreciated it could be offered up as evidence of crimes in which they were implicated in a future prosecution.
The tension continues to build surround the central issue of the Bush Administration's interrogation program. Something has to give eventually.
Obama on Executive Power
Glenn Greenwald has two blog posts, this one from today and this one from the weekend, that focus on the Obama Administration's attempts to uphold the Bush Administration's far-reaching power of the Executive Branch. From Greenwald's piece today:
The Obama Administration is arguing that only the Executive Branch should have the (lone) power to decide whether classified documents can be used in a court proceeding. They are also arguing that once the President makes a decision on this, that courts do not have the authority to challenge this decision. As Greenwald points out, under this argument, the following situation could have the potential to happen:
- The President breaks the law
- The President decides that the information about the lawbreaking is classified
- The President orders that the classified information cannot be used in court
- This decision can not be reviewed by courts
I am in agreement that this is straight out of the Bush Administration's "Executive Power" playbook. From Greenwald:
As I detailed over the weekend, the Obama administration -- in the case brought by two American lawyers and their charity-client claiming that their conversations were illegally intercepted by the Bush administration -- has announced that it intends to try to appeal, yet again, in order to prevent the court from hearing the lawsuit. On Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Obama's request to stay the District Judge's Order, which had held that it will review a classified document that the plaintiffs claim proves they were subjected to the illegal eavesdropping (thus conferring standing on the plaintiffs to challenge the legality of Bush's NSA program), and also ordered the Obama administration to provide security clearances to the plaintiffs' lawyers so that they could review the document as well. The Obama DOJ immediately announced they intend to try to
appeal again -- the third time, since Obama's Inauguration, that the Obama DOJ
will try to argue before a court that the case should not heard at all.
The Obama Administration is arguing that only the Executive Branch should have the (lone) power to decide whether classified documents can be used in a court proceeding. They are also arguing that once the President makes a decision on this, that courts do not have the authority to challenge this decision. As Greenwald points out, under this argument, the following situation could have the potential to happen:
- The President breaks the law
- The President decides that the information about the lawbreaking is classified
- The President orders that the classified information cannot be used in court
- This decision can not be reviewed by courts
I am in agreement that this is straight out of the Bush Administration's "Executive Power" playbook. From Greenwald:
As Marcy Wheeler documents in detail, the Obama DOJ is now spouting the Cheney/Addington view of government in its purest and most radical expression. Citing lengthy excepts from the Obama DOJ's brief filed on Friday following its loss in the appeals court -- a brief that could easily have been written by John Yoo or David Addington in its distinctly un-American and anti-constitutional theories purporting to vest unchallengeable, unreviewable power in the President...
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